There are many definitions to discipline. Dictionary.com on the 2nd definition which I liked more than all the other definitions I looks up says: activity, exercise, or a regimen that develops or improves a skill; training:
Activity, exercise, regimen, refine, improvement, skill, training, developement, hard work, ethics, open mind-ness, the list goes one? Does this sound familiar? Maybe something that you need to do to achieve results in sports, gym, relationship, career? If nothing good came easy then how do you expect this special power to come easy?
Lets use basketball players for this example: What is the first thing you learn? What is the first purchase you make? Could be shoes, socks etc but you have to have a ball, if you want to you can play barefoot but you cannot begin without a ball. What’s the first thing you do with the ball? How do you check for quality control? You dribble, if the bounce is good, not too much or too little it feels good in your hands. Think of dribbling the ball technique when developing a habit. Julie Bell a sports psychologist did thorough research on group of professional athletes and discovered it takes on average 28 reminders/practices to developer a habit to make it a second nature. If your plan is to learn to dribble the ball you will need to practice let’s say 2 hour per day. It will most likely take you about a month of practice to stop looking at the ball to be able dribble without giving the ball all your attention. With practice you get good enough to dribble on just muscle memory, now you can look at the hoop for an open shot or look for another player to pass to or to try your cross over or another move to overtake the opponent. With practicing passing, shooting, and overall man hours of dong the practice you become what we call “good” at the activity in this case good at basketball. Then you developer your discipline to refine your game, you put hard work, dedication, blood, sweat, train, refine, your 10,000 hours and it becomes the familial practice of disciplinary hard work and you become what we call a professional player. It’s easier said than done but I don’t think any professional athlete skipped any of those steps, but it’s ironic when we don’t achieve our results without the required steps we can blame others, the situation, our peers or call it bad luck. No professional has ever achieved their level of expertise without the required work and time.
So how do how do you make diamonds? Well you don’t, diamonds are a result of time and pressure. Without it it’s just a carbon source and minerals . We are no different, if we don’t have some pressure and discipline over time we are just potential diamonds and potential diamonds have no value only real ones do.